President Bush, in his address to the nation Thursday evening, unveiled a new strategy in Iraq — he called it "return on success" — that would bring home American troops from Iraq as they succeed in restoring order.
It was just another way of asking the nation for more time. He endorsed Gen. David Petraeus’ recommendation to end the surge of 30,000 troops by next summer, which the military had said couldn’t be sustained past that time anyway.
There was very little new here, except an acknowledgment by Bush that the war will continue into his successor’s term, an open-ended commitment couched as an "enduring relationship" with a trusted ally. Bush’s stand makes it probable that upwards of 100,000 troops will be left in Iraq at the end of his presidency. And that he’ll leave the tough decisions for ending the Iraq war to his successor.
This isn’t what the country signed onto when Bush took the country to war with Iraq in 2003.
"The way forward I have described tonight makes it possible, for the first time in years, for people who have been on opposite sides of this difficult debate to come together."
Well, not quite.
If anything, Bush’s "way forward" is only his latest version of "stay the course," a path that will lead to even deeper frustration in the country and angry debate in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
A Wichita pharmacist was justified and acted in self-defense in shooting to death an armed robber last month, the Sedgwick County district attorney’s office has ruled. Judging by the circumstances, the ruling sounds right.
But it was sad and poignant nonetheless to learn that the would-be robber, Alexander Mies, was a former high school football standout who became addicted to painkillers after a long series of knee operations. And to read that he had a gentle, compassionate side. And that his gun was not loaded.
No, that doesn’t change how we see the ruling or excuse what he did, but it casts the fatal outcome more in shades of gray than black and white. Like most shootings, justified or not, this was a tragedy for all concerned.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
The “needing improvement” label that the No Child Left Behind law imposes on schools makes it sound as if the labeled schools are failing and all others are doing great. But that isn’t necessarily the case, as an Eagle news article Wednesday noted.
Most larger schools on the “bad list” are there because certain subgroups of students — such as special education students or students who speak English as a second language — didn’t make “adequate yearly progress” on achievement tests. But many smaller schools (which are most of the schools in Kansas) don’t have enough of these students to have to measure and grade them as separate subgroups. That’s not a fair comparison. The article also reported how Andover Central Middle School made the bad list because of a special education subgroup yet, overall, earned several awards for excellence. That’s not a failing school.
Meanwhile, the Lawrence Journal-World reported on a master’s thesis done by a former University of Kansas student who studied 20 Kansas high schools. He predicted that only one of those schools would be able to meet the 100 percent proficient mandate of NCLB by 2014 — and that would only happen if the school’s scores improved each year at a high level.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., acted on behalf of all frustrated Americans Wednesday in pressing Mattel chairman and CEO Robert Eckert (in photo) and Consumer Product Safety Commission interim chairwoman Nancy Nord for answers about unsafe Chinese-made toys and other products. “’Made in China’ has become a warning label,” Brownback said at the Senate hearing, observing that since December, 177 Chinese-made consumer products have been recalled in the United States.
“The country is fed up with it,” he told the chairman of Mattel, which makes 65 percent of its kids’ products in China.
Brownback suggested banning some Chinese-made products, noting that it invites problems to manufacture goods in a nation as closed and authoritarian as China.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Given the year Kansas has had, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Major Gen. Tod Bunting were wise this week to remind everyone from public officials to ordinary Kansans to be prepared for nature’s worst. The state’s more than $1 billion in damage already this year — from western Kansas’ ice storm to the Greensburg tornado to southeast Kansas’ flooding — has tested the state’s emergency readiness. The Sept. 11 anniversary also was cause to note that authorities cannot rely on the federal dollars that flowed after the disaster. In the past four years, Kansas has seen its Department of Homeland Security grant funding shrink by 71 percent, from $29 million in 2004 to $8 million this year. That means 75 percent more money for likely targets California, New York and Washington, D.C. — dollars they need and deserve. But meanwhile, Kansas must spend less without being less safe.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
